What is the inability to see the spirit of a being leaving the body? If you have witnessed a human or animal death, you would know that when the soul leaves the body it takes one’s life force with it. There is nothing left but an empty shell, a carcass of empty organic matter that once provided a vehicle for that being. We’ve all seen objects representative of death. Be it a skull, bones, or the last moments of someone dying acted out in motion picture movie. But very few actually witness the spirit leaving the body. And one can only wonder, “Where does it go?” Without speculating on an assortment of historical beliefs based on religion––although, that certainly comes to mind, I wish to explore the scientific approach to the essence of form to one’s spirit, one’s soul, and one’s life force that is invisible to the naked eye. As light, as multidimensional matter or something inconceivable, I suggest that it does not vanish into thin air. Whether we can see it or not does not answer the question to the existence of such forms of energy that abundantly fill the earth. For we can agree energy is the force in which automates our lives. But just because we cannot see the energy that drives the spirit, it does not mean that it is not there after death. And there are many offerings for this idea.

Many believe the spirit returns to God or a supernatural being that created the universe and there is a journey that takes place between this plane and that one. We’ve all heard of the accounts of near-death experiences describing that they saw a very bright light. Much like in the movie ‘Poltergeist’ where the youngest actor Carol Anne displays her supernatural abilities to perceive the souls of the dead, she is encouraged to guide the souls who have haunted her family’s house toward the light but not to enter it herself. It is also a known fact that there have been countless accounts of spiritual phenomena which suggest the remnants of residue left behind may be energy in the form of ghosts that cause other supernatural events to occur.

I’m drawn to the notion that there is something all around us that we cannot see with our eyes but can feel with our senses. The potentiality of a fourth, fifth, or even further dimensions of existence that would help to understand––through visualization––much of the mysteries that bewilder the mind conditioned by the sensory perception in the third. These will not fully answer, for we do not have such answers but help to propose the possibilities. I also believe that within the unseen dimensions around us, lies the answer to what the spirit does and where the spirit goes. It may be that the spirit enters another plane that the idea of dimension does not accurately or justly describe, but it is the best concept thus far that can be visualized and that is what I wish to create through digital media animation; the threshold that exists between the dimensions of human reality on earth and that of the afterlife on the other side, the spirit realm.

More specifically, this threshold of crossing over leads to many questions concerning the nature of the life force’s shape, form and matter; that to assume it can disperse as the invisible energies of sound waves or heat and still retain its shape could be considered preposterous. However, it seems to me that the point at which this does occur, there is undoubtedly a separation from the body and it is in this instance that I wish to focus my concerns. That somehow one could not only create a visualization of an unseen energy in separation from the body, one could devise a way to provide two different environments for that energy to transcend from the living to the afterlife.

In our text for the class Energy Seminar, we covered the material Surrealism/Relativistic Distortion by Leonard Shlain where he mentions how the only true two-dimensional objects in our three-dimensional world are reflections and shadows and he poses the question, “If shadows are two-dimensional projections of three-dimensional objects, could we and the objects in our world be three dimensional shadows of being and things that exist in a fourth dimension?” In our research of invisible energies, it is conceivable to picture this. This elusive grasp for answers to questions like these and ideas that have forever dominated mankind’s thoughts about life, death, and the afterlife, show how we are basically seeking higher learning through higher consciousness and understanding, we may occasionally catch a glimpse of secret knowledge. And if in a fourth dimension or beyond we may find the answers to persistent questions, perhaps the declaration of such an existence is the first step to its manifestation.